Guinean refugees stay behind as UN closes camp

CONAKRY, Sep 30 (Reuters) Some 400 refugees from Sierra Leone's brutal 1991-2002 civil war today remained behind when the United Nations' refugee agency closed a camp in southern Guinea.

The UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) announced the closure of the Boreah facility near the town of Kissidougou two years ago, but a group of 1,000 refugees remained in the hope of winning asylum in Western countries.

Since then, around 600 of them have accepted local integration packages in Guinea. The remainder have stayed at the Boreah camp and declined offers of repatriation to Sierra Leone, which is preparing for post-war elections next year.

''We consider these refugees are now the responsibility of the Guinean government,'' Faya Millimono, head of communication for UNHCR in Guinea, told Reuters.

Two other camps in the Kissidougou region containing refugees from Liberia's catastrophic 14-year civil war, which killed 250,000 people, were closed in September.

Some 2,000 of these Liberians were transferred to camps in the south eastern Nzerekore region, closer to the border with their country.

''Guinea still has some 39,000 refugees on its territory, of whom 9,000 are in the capital Conakry. These refugees have come from Liberia, Ivory Coast and Sierra Leone,'' Millimono said.

Long a bulwark of stability in war-torn West Africa, years of economic decline have stirred social tensions in Guinea, prompting a series of general strikes over the last year.

The ailing health of Guinea's veteran President Lansana Conte, a chain-smoking diabetic in his 70s, has also sown fears of a power vacuum should he die without naming a successor to his 22-year reign.

REUTERS SY KP2035